To Where We Are Together
by embracing-shadows
Summary: In the end, she was all too glad to go towards the light.


Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot!

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They all watched her, day by day, as she slowly faded. Despite their efforts, it seemed that there was nothing they could do to help her. Hermione Granger, for one reason or another, was slipping away from them at a steady rate. After a few months she was tired, after a year she was exhausted, and after two years she was bed ridden. Now as the third year drew to a close they gathered around her bed, the ones that loved her the most, and watched as she laboriously drew breath, each opening of her lungs a horrible fight. But they had to watch. It was clear that, after such a long decline, these were her last moments.

They all were crying of course: Harry, all the surviving Weasley's, her parents, and many members of the Order. They gathered about her magically enlarged room in a ring around the bed, trying to smile comfortingly down upon her. She looked wretched, no matter what they told her, and even she knew that. Her hair had become thin and her eyes were sunken. Her skin was a pasty white and she looked as if the simple act of _being_ caused her pain.

"We tried Hermione," Ginny sobbed to her dying friend as she huddled in Harry's arms. "I'm sorry we couldn't save you." Her voice broke as the words passed her lips, but Hermione offered her a wan smile. It was sad, but it was a smile all the same, the best that she could muster.

"I've known it was coming ever since the war," Hermione whispered weakly. "So many have died and I've carried their guilt this far. I can be at peace now, Ginny. Please stop crying. I'm finally going to stop hurting." Harry clenched his jaw and beside him Ron's lip quivered. Molly wailed, even as Minerva tightened her hands in to fists. Mr. And Mrs. Granger clung to each other desperately.

"Go to rest, Hermione," came a soft voice from the back of the crowd. Luna Lovegood looked up, her eyes more focused and sincere than ever they had been before in her life. Hermione found tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, and as one fell she finally gave in.

"I'm so very tired," she whispered.

Perhaps someone might have said something more then, to remind her once again how loved she was by everyone in the room, but it was at that moment that they were all startled by a bright light appearing at the end of the bed. The people gathered there all stepped back as the light spun brighter until it congealed, and from its very center stepped a corporeal figure with a very familiar human shape. He was tall and thin, though the muscles on his bare chest and arms were obvious. He wore naught but a toga like garment concealing his lower half and his feet were sandal shod.

"Fred!" Molly gasped as the spirit of her dead son stepped in to the room and held his surreal head high. Hermione's fading eyes focused on him with a liveliness she hadn't felt since the boy before her had been killed in the final battle.

Ignoring the gasps and exclamations from those gathered in the room, Fred looked at the woman lying on the bed and, with a beautiful smile, extended one hand invitingly. Mustering her strength, Hermione smiled back for the last time, then she closed her eyes and sighed. As the breath rushed from her lungs her pale spirit lifted gracefully from her body to a sitting position, legs still entwined with her physical form. Still smiling she raised her own hand to accept Fred's, and he lifted her up. She rose in to the air, clothed in her own formal white toga dress and sandals, and floated down to stand beside him.

Their eyes stayed only on each other until Fred wordlessly indicated the light from which he had appeared. Hermione's smile grew even larger as she nodded once, then they turned together and stepped confidently in to the light, holding tight to each other's hand. The light grew even brighter than before as it encompassed them, and when it extinguished abruptly, they were gone. There was silence in the room while they all tried to take in what had just happened.

"And now they are at peace," Luna's soft voice announced, "and they shall rest in the vaults of heaven forevermore, awaiting those they loved with the patience of angels." George, the lone surviving twin of the spirit who had come to claim the one who had just died, looked up and met the eyes of the one who had always seemed to him an oddity. If Fred could find love in death, George could find love in life.

And so the world kept turning.


End file.
